Extension Season: The Smart Window for Accounting Firm Upgrades
- Alik Mock
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
The months between spring and fall aren’t just quiet—they’re golden. Here’s how smart firms use extension season to improve operations, boost team capacity, and prep for growth.
Why Q4 and Q1 Are the Worst Times for Change
Busy season is brutal. From January through April, your team runs on adrenaline—juggling deadlines, client demands, and 12-hour days. Then Q4 rolls around with year-end planning and audit prep. It’s no surprise that “seasonality and workload compression” is consistently ranked as one of the top challenges for firms.
📊 During peak season: Accountants work 55–100 hours/week Teams lose 25% of time to repetitive, low-value tasks 65% of tax work time is spent chasing client documents
Trying to implement major changes during these peak months? It’s like replacing your tires at highway speed. Most firms just don’t have the bandwidth. If you want change to stick, don’t force it into the busiest months of your year.
Why Extension Season is Your High-Leverage Opportunity
Extension season—roughly mid-April to mid-October—is your operational sweet spot. Workloads slow. Team capacity returns. Leaders regain the mental bandwidth to plan and improve.
As Roman Kepczyk advises, this window is the best time to hold a tax season debrief and identify key process improvements.
Use it to:
Re-engineer inefficient workflows
Upgrade and integrate your tech stack
Train your team
Streamline your client base
Strengthen internal systems before year-end chaos returns
Lock Your Stack: Why Tech Decisions Belong in Extension Season
Jason Staats says it best in his video, Smart Accounting Firms Are Scrambling To Do This Before June!:
“The smartest firms I know aren’t window shopping for tech all year. They’re taking 30 days right now to decide on any tech changes—and that’s it for the next 12 months.”
He’s right. Waiting until fall to swap out systems means you’re testing in production come January. Finalize tech decisions now so your team can build confidence and muscle memory well in advance.
Key categories to prioritize:
What to Tackle Now: High-Impact Improvements for the Off-Season
1. Fix the Workflow Bottlenecks
Debrief on what broke during tax season. Document pain points. Map out workflows and tweak templates. Pilot improvements now, not during peak volume.
2. Upgrade Your Technology
Evaluate tools in May–June. Pilot in July–August. Go live before October. That timeline is the difference between confidence and chaos. Tools that eliminate double work, automate follow-ups, and integrate systems don’t just save time—they reduce risk.
3. Train and Cross-Train Your Team
Hold skill-building sessions. Cross-train roles. Invite staff to the improvement projects. This builds flexibility and morale.
4. Improve the Client Experience
Roll out client portals. Automate reminders and document requests. Send post-season surveys like this NPS process from Karbon to identify service gaps.
5. Refine Your Client Mix
Review your book. Raise fees. Let go of clients that drain resources. Expand advisory offerings.
Survive Busy Season: Tips from Ryan Lazanis
Ryan Lazanis’s blog offers clear, practical strategies that align perfectly with off-season planning to escape burnout cycles:
Set client deadlines and enforce them
Use 3-tiered pricing to control capacity and boost margins
Cut bad clients to protect your team
Automate routine tasks and client follow-ups to reclaim time
Replace meetings with async tools like Loom
Promote self-care to reduce burnout
Don’t delay hard decisions until January. Fix them when you actually have time—now.
How Leading Firms Win During Extension Season
Plenty of accounting firms are already leveraging the extension season to drive real transformation.
BNA, a U.S.-based firm, slashed tax return delivery time to three days by piloting new tech stacks and refining processes during the extension-season—not during crunch time. While tax returns are commonly delivered in 18-20 days by US firms.
Firms that implemented automation and integrated a Practice Management system during the summer reported faster prep cycles and fewer bottlenecks by January. One CPA told CPA Trendlines that “more technology” made all the difference.
Have Fewer fire drills, less overtime, and higher retention the following spring. None of these gains happened by accident. They were the product of a deliberate, off-season strategy.
From Strategy to Execution: What Makes Change Stick
Extension season isn’t just a “calm period.” It’s when your business systems finally have the capacity to change. Trying to overhaul processes in Q1 or Q4 is like repairing an airplane mid-flight. In contrast, extension season provides the space and safety to experiment, learn, and scale improvements. Introducing change when the system has slack—not stress—is how you build improvements that last.
Your 6-Step Extension-Season Implementation Plan:
Reflect: Run a 90-minute team debrief. What worked? What didn’t?
Prioritize: Choose 1–2 high-impact areas to improve.
Design: Assign project owners. Build a roadmap. Set milestones.
Pilot: Test on a small scale. Refine as you go.
Institutionalize: Train, document, and go firm-wide.
Reassess: After Oct 15, regroup and tune for next season.
This rhythm builds operational muscle memory—so you improve every year, not just react.
Leadership Makes the Difference
Change management doesn’t just need software—it needs buy-in. The best transformations happen when leaders:
Champion iteration over perfection
Protect time for strategic work
Foster psychological safety so teams can test, fail, and improve
Set the tone: improvement isn’t a side project—it’s part of the job. Championships are won in the off-season!
Your Next Steps: Turn Calm Into Capacity
If you want to stop “surviving” busy season and start thriving, here’s your off-season checklist:
✅ Hold a 90-minute team debrief
✅ Lock in your tech stack by June
✅ Prioritize 2–3 high-impact improvements
✅ Pilot in July–August
✅ Roll out and train before October
✅ Set clear pricing and client expectations
Busy season will always be intense—but it doesn’t have to be chaotic. The firms that win don’t wait for disaster. They invest when things are calm.
Want a partner to guide you through it? Genwise leads firms through a structured 3-week Efficiency Assessment that gives firm leaders a clear, actionable roadmap—before any implementation begins. Once solutions are confirmed, Genwise ties it all together: implementing, integrating, and training your team to run like a well-oiled machine—internally aligned, externally effortless—before the next crunch hits.
